Plight Of Poor Challenges Preachers To Open Wallets

September 8, 1985|By Douglas Pike of the Sentinel Staff

Give me a clue. What's so swell about the news that only 34 million Americans were below the poverty line last year -- and that as many as one- third of them would be above the line if you count subsidized housing, medicine and food? What's the big deal that, after rising during President Reagan's first term, the poverty rate dipped last year?

Please consider an out-of-fashion proposition: This nation shouldn't have 1 million people living in poverty let alone tens of millions. It's an economic tour de force that Americans this year will produce goods and services worth more than $3 trillion. But it is a national disgrace that amid this prosperity there are enough poor Americans to populate a country the size of Ethiopia.

No, this isn't some summons to a newfangled federal War on Poverty. New, big spending won't be coming from Washington now that President Reagan has cut income taxes by 23 percent and increased the national debt by more than 100 percent. The best hope is to defend food stamps, Medicaid and other stretches of the federal safety net and to get far more action at the community level from government and private institutions.

It's not just conservatives who have decried big-government gridlock and have hyped local initiatives. Much the same thing was heard from New Leftists in the 1960s and later from Democrat Jimmy Carter. In general, the most effective anti-poverty programs should be those whose decision-making and financial support are at the community level.

As Tocqueville noted a century and a half ago, the local level is where citizens can best see the link between the public good and their own self- interest. The question becomes simpler: Do you want to give the down-and- out family down the street a hand, or do you want one of their kids living on welfare and the other breaking into your house?

Sure, sure, Washington was an inept employer of last resort in its CETA program, but that doesn't mean smaller units of government necessarily would create wasteful make-work. The California Conservation Corps is a lean, maturity-building machine that refutes that image. Local governments ought to be putting unemployed people on their payrolls.

But as conservatives and neo-liberals have stressed, governments can be only a partner in anti-poverty initiatives. Much of the duty of expanding opportunity belongs to the private sector -- including businesses, public- interest activists, philanthropists, service clubs, charities and churches. With at least one in 10 Americans too poor to have the basic essentials of daily life, it's clear that private groups and fat cats aren't doing nearly enough.

Outside of government, the most galling underperformers are some of the telegenic preachers who are so gung-ho about America's holy war in Nicaragua and an amendment to balance the budget. I would like to see them better live up to the fifth book of Moses -- Deuteronomy -- which says, ''You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him, and lend him enough for his need, whatever it may be.'' To the degree that government can't help all citizens meet their basic needs, I want to hear more about how those who preach against big government will help fill that pain-riddled gap. If by chance, adequate clothing for the poor meant fewer suits for TV preachers, if adequate housing for the poor meant less-opulent houses of worship, so be it.